by Frank Tayell
Chapter 16 - The Dark Night
March 13th, Addison County, Vermont
He woke, cold, shivering, hungry, and thirsty. The moon was high outside. The yard empty of the undead. Slowly, almost unwillingly, he made his way downstairs. The fire in the stove had gone out, and he didn’t want to light it again. He didn’t want to spend any time in that grim room. He went back to the bathroom, filled a glass with water, and downed it. He drank another, intending to fill his stomach with water, but the flow turned to a trickle, and stopped with the third glass only half full. Of course, there was no electricity for the pump, and he’d used up all that was in the pipes.
He had to go back into the kitchen now, this time to fetch the shotgun. He cleaned it with a rag soaked in disinfectant, unsure whether he was scrubbing away the infected blood or the invisible radiation. Except, was it likely to be contaminated? Was the pistol? It had been inside the truck, hadn’t it? And he’d driven away from the mushroom cloud before the irradiated particles thrown up during the explosion had a chance to settle back to Earth. That was why it was called fallout, wasn’t it? It had to fall. He wasn’t certain, and after being wrong about so many things, didn’t want to bet his life on the small chance he was right.
The shells were in a cabinet in the living room. The gun loaded, he went outside. The night was clear, the road empty. All was still. Almost too still. Where were the bats and moths, the rodents and all the rest scurrying about their nocturnal business? He crossed quickly to the truck. On the passenger seat was a box. In it were three cans of stew, identical to the one in the kitchen. There were no keys. They were probably on Abigail’s body. He wasn’t going to leave before dawn, so that could wait. He took the box back inside.
Again, he hesitated. Unwilling to go back in the kitchen, he started a small fire in the living room, using a polished brass tray as a fire pit. Opening the window to let the smoke out, he heated stew, still in its can, on the flames. As fire turned the label to ash, it struck him again how ill-prepared he was for this new type of life. It wasn’t just his ignorance of radiation, medicine, or survival. What did he know about farming? Perhaps this part of America had no nocturnal animals. His ignorance was astonishing, but he knew that in the coming months he’d either learn or die.
“Months? Okay, yeah, maybe not months, but it might be. It might be years. You’re alive now, so what next?”
In some ways it was the same question he’d been asking himself since the outbreak, but now it was brought into sharp focus. The cabal was dead. He could assume more than one nuclear bomb had been detonated, and that the United States wasn’t the only target. There was a chance that more bombs would fall, and in the coming weeks the planet would become a radioactive desert.
“But what if it’s not?”
Then he was alive, and if he didn’t starve, freeze, get ripped apart by the undead, or get a lethal dose of radiation, he might still be alive in a week’s time.
“Maybe, and you might as well assume you will be. So what are your priorities?”
The stew began to bubble. He had to go back into the kitchen to find something with which to take it off the heat, then again to get a spoon and bowl from the cupboard. As he methodically ate his way through the can, he felt sympathy for the students at whatever school it had come from.
“A high school might have a Geiger counter, and that’s what I need.” It might not, but a police station would, or a firehouse, or an airport. The undead were everywhere, starvation and thirst would dog his footsteps from now on, but radiation could be avoided if he found a Geiger counter. He’d find a police station in a town, and he’d find a town by following the roads. And then…
“Maine?”
His cottage was the obvious destination, but then what? He put the bowl down. He’d eat the rest before he left, but right now he couldn’t face another bite. He knew he wasn’t going to sleep, so went back upstairs, found a blanket, and brought it down to cover Abigail. Before he did, he retrieved the keys from her pocket. Covering her with the sheet seemed a tokenistic gesture. It was like how Helena had wanted to bury the police officer near Dr Ayers’s house. It meant nothing to anyone else, but it was the least he could do, and because it was the least he could do, he had to do it, lest he lose some last part of himself.
He went out to the truck. There were a few gallons in the tank. Not enough to get him to Maine, but enough to get him to a town. Find more fuel. Find a Geiger counter. And then…
“Britain?”
Maybe. Unless it had been destroyed. It was a dream, an obligation, and one he’d left too late. His chance was gone. The thought of obligations reminded him of Max, and the promise he’d made.
“Claire.” Max had said the First Lady and their children were at their house in Vermont. That couldn’t be far from here. There was little chance she’d survived, but he’d promised he would look. He would keep his word, and so close this last chapter of his old life, leaving him a truly blank slate, and a fate of which he alone would be the master.
More pertinently, the Secret Service had set up a command post there after the election. There would be a supply of fuel, weapons, and, probably, a Geiger counter.
He sat down in the living room, to wait for dawn.
Chapter 17 - The Long Day
Addison County, Vermont
He woke from a light doze with a vision of a street he’d not walked in decades, and a face he’d not dared meet in person. The idea energized him in a way that the now-cold stew couldn’t. There was coffee in the cupboard, but he didn’t want to waste time making it. He paused in the doorway to the kitchen, staring at the .45 on the table. He couldn’t risk taking it, nor the assault rifle that still lay where he’d dropped it in the yard. He doubted either was radioactive, but at the same time, didn’t want to stretch his already taut luck.
There was paper in the drawer of a very old-fashioned hall table, on which was an equally old-fashioned phone next to a very new cell-phone charger. He scrawled a note and taped it to the hallway floor by the entrance to the kitchen. He pinned a second note to the front door.
“There’s a .45 on the kitchen table. It may be radioactive, and this property might be contaminated. One zombie inside. Dead. She was the owner. Abigail Benford. Her death was quick. Her last act was one of kindness. May that be a lesson to us all.” He signed both notes Sholto.
He left the two cans of stew in the hall, but took the box of shotgun shells and a short-handled axe from the tool shed.
It was only as he was pulling onto the road that he realized the truck worked. It was an old model, with a missing radio, and no visible electronics on the dashboard. It was possible that there was simply no circuitry for an electromagnetic pulse to fry. He glanced back at the house, now receding in the distance. Abigail had said that the power had gone out at the other house, the one from which she had fled, but that could have been the mains supply, and it was five miles away. It was possible that he was beyond the effects of an EMP. He tried to think if he’d seen anything electronic in the house. He couldn’t remember. He should have tried the phone, or looked for a flashlight. Certainly, he should have looked for that. The house grew smaller in the rearview mirror, but he didn’t turn around. He didn’t want to go back.
“Should have looked for a compass, too,” he muttered. He’d taken a road map. According to it, he was twenty miles west and forty south of Claire Maxwell’s home. Within two hours, he’d have access to all the electronics he could want.
He gave the fuel gauge a tap. The needle gave a reassuring bounce. He had enough to get to the house, and there he should find all he would need. Much to Claire’s irritation, a fuel tank had been installed, along with the guard post that she called a barracks. The house was her retreat from the world, and very much a place for her to escape from the political life the governor’s mansion had thrust upon her. Perhaps she was still there. Perhaps the Secret Service agents were there as well. He doubted it. Another doubt crept in, of the
odds that the house might have been targeted by Russia or China. That was even less likely. Alive or dead, she would be irrelevant to the grander global game of politics. That didn’t mean it hadn’t happened, but he tried to not to think of that, or of what he might be driving into.
More likely, she and the children had been hustled onto a helicopter and away to a bunker. It was equally probable that after the Secret Service had left, locals would have gone to the house to strip it bare, so when he saw the sign for the filling station, he decided to stop. When he saw the nozzles hanging loose by the pumps, he almost changed his mind. He brought the truck to a halt by the side of the road, grabbed the shotgun, and jumped out.
“Hello!” he called. There was no reply. Beyond the pumps was a small, weather-beaten store in serious need of a lick of paint. Parked behind that, he could see the hood of a black sedan. Shotgun raised, he walked toward the vehicle.
“Hello!” he called again, now listening for the dry wheeze of the undead. He didn’t hear that, either. The sedan was a high-end model, and a rental according to the sticker on the rear windshield. Mud splattered the wheels and coated the doors. Someone had driven it all the way from Arkansas. The backseat was filled with wrappers and empty fast-food cartons.
“An airport?” Perhaps that had been the starting point. A plane forced to make an emergency landing after the airspace was closed. A passenger, desperate to get home, but wise enough to see the world had changed, had grabbed anything on sale from any concession stand willing to take their money. The car must have been the last one in the lot. Or perhaps it had been driven here by someone who worked the car rental business at the airport.
“Or perhaps not. It doesn’t matter.”
And it didn’t, he was just delaying going inside. That wasn’t because he thought he’d find the undead – he no longer feared them – but out of a reluctance to finish this last part of his journey. There was another possibility waiting for him at the house in Vermont. Claire and the children could be dead, murdered by the cabal. The more he tried not to think about it, the more that possibility became a certainty.
“Hello!” he called, slamming the butt of the shotgun into the wooden door at the back of the store. There was no response from inside, but the door was firmly locked. He went back to the front. This door was open and creaked as he pushed it aside.
The interior was unlit. The three banks of shelves were mostly bare. What remained was an odd assortment of dish soap, brake fluid, and shoe polish. Six stools were lined up along the narrow counter at the rear of the store, near a solitary register. Behind the counter was a door that led to a small kitchen. He tried the light switch and was unsurprised when nothing happened. The faucet over the small sink had been left on to run dry, presumably by some previous scavenger. He turned the faucet off. Pausing only to glance longingly at the short menu advertising maple syrup with everything, he went outside and perched on the hood of the truck.
No zombies, which was good, but no people, which was a mixed blessing. The countryside seemed so lifeless. It was almost as if he was existing outside of time, as if nothing was real unless it was within his field of vision. That thought lasted until he heard the sound of an engine.
Two cars sped along the road toward him. Both were old model trucks like the one he’d taken from the farm, though both appeared to be in better repair. He tried to remember how to look friendly but dangerous. The trucks came to an abrupt halt. Even if he’d still been carrying that assault rifle, he’d be no match for the six soldiers who jumped out. He thought of the cabal and their propensity to wear military uniforms, but three of the soldiers here were women. He’d not seen any among the guards at the industrial site, nor with Powell. The one with Addison had been an exception. It wasn’t much of a lead on which to place his life, but against six of them, violence wasn’t an option. He decided to play peacemaker instead. He slid the shotgun back into the truck.
“Hi,” he said addressing a man with sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve. By far he was the oldest in the group. There was a trace of grey in his stubble. Of the others, three were male, but he doubted they could raise more than a few scraggly whiskers.
“Good morning, sir,” the sergeant replied with that gruff civility a non-com always used when addressing a civilian. “Is this your filling station?”
“I was just passing through,” Tom said. “On a search for gasoline.”
One of the privates had a small box in her hand. She was waving it around as if it were a talisman.
“Is that a Geiger counter?” Tom asked. “Would you mind running it over me?”
The soldiers, as one, took a step back.
“I was upwind of a mushroom cloud,” Tom said. “Somewhere in… I thought it was Pennsylvania. It might have been New York. I was trying to get away and didn’t pay attention to where I was until I reached Vermont.”
“Dawson!” the sergeant barked. The soldier with the Geiger counter snapped to attention before she understood the meaning of the command. The device held at arm’s length in front, she approached Tom. The machine clicked softly, but no more rapidly, as she got nearer.
“Best check the truck, too,” Tom said.
“Clean,” Dawson said. “It’s clean.”
Tom gave an involuntary laugh of relief. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you. That’s a pretty ancient Geiger counter. Looks like it came off the Ark.”
“We got it from a high school,” the sergeant said. “It works, and that’s what counts. Where did you see this mushroom cloud?”
“Pennsylvania or New York State, I’m not sure,” Tom said. “I think it was about twenty miles south of me. Maybe less, maybe more. A minute or two after, I felt a shockwave, but that might have been from a secondary explosion.”
“You didn’t see a second mushroom cloud?” the sergeant asked.
“No,” Tom said, “but there were too many trees and hills to see much. I started driving, and I… I don’t remember much until I ran out of fuel. I walked, and I… I don’t remember much of that, either. I reached a farmhouse. The owner was infected. She died. Now here I am. Is there anything you can tell me? I’m guessing from the Geiger counter that other bombs fell.”
“I’m afraid so, sir,” the sergeant said. “I’m afraid so. All right, you lot, you know the drill. Hernandez, Dawson, watch the south. Janson, Brooker, take the road to the north. Watch. Listen. Sir, is there anything inside the store?”
“It’s been stripped,” Tom said.
“I meant anything… moving.”
“Ah. No.”
“Clark, you know what to look for. Snap to it!” The privates deployed. “Jim Russell,” the sergeant said, holding out his hand.
“Sholto,” Tom said. “Thaddeus Sholto.”
“Sholto? What’s that, Dutch?”
“British,” Tom said. “It’s good to meet you, but where did the bombs fall?”
“Twenty miles north of the Canadian border.”
“In Canada? What’s there? A military base or something?”
“Nothing. There’s nothing there,” Russell said. “I don’t even think there’s a town. If there was, there certainly isn’t anymore.”
“Or we zapped the missile’s targeting chip,” Private Dawson called. “We can do that, can’t we?”
“You’re meant to be watching the road,” Russell barked. “Obey your orders, or you’ll feel precisely what the American military can do!”
The private scurried further down the road.
“Where were you heading?” Russell asked.
“Maine, I think,” Tom said. “The Atlantic coast. I… it’s hard to know what to do, or where to go. What were you doing in Canada?”
“Guarding the border. That’s where we were deployed. The entire brigade was there. If you can call it a brigade. Our orders were to stop the infected, isolate them, but let the rest of the refugees through. It didn’t matter which direction people were traveling.”
“Canadians were h
eading south?”
“And that tells you what a futile exercise it was,” the sergeant said. “But orders are orders, and I didn’t see any Canucks with whom I could clarify them. It wouldn’t have mattered if there were. No one told us what to do with the infected.”
“Were there many?” Tom asked.
“Hard to say. We stopped a few cars where people had noticeable bites, even a few where they had some zombie chained up in the back. Those were mostly children.” He shook his head. “But we couldn’t really do anything. This was a four-lane road, and there were ten of us. Me, this lot, and four others. All nine of them were only a few weeks out of basic training. It took half of us to stop a car while the other half stopped the next one. By the time we’d dealt with the occupants, a dozen other vehicles had rocketed past.”
“What did you do with the infected?” Tom asked.
“What could we do? We stood over them with our rifles, waiting with their families, at least, when the families stayed. A lot of times they didn’t. And then we shot the zombie. You heard the rumors about immunity?”
“No.”
The sergeant gave a sad smile. “There are two rumors. One is that there’s a safe haven just a little further down the road. I’ve heard that on every continent, and in every conflict where I’ve been deployed. Refugees always tell themselves safety lies ahead until, in repetition, that prayer becomes an expectation that’s almost always unfulfilled. The other rumor is that people are immune. Everyone we stopped seemed to believe it, but it was always something they’d heard from someone else. Never saw it myself. They always died, always came back, and I always put a bullet in their skull. After the sixth, I told them not to stop any more vehicles. We just kept the road clear. Even that was almost more than we could do. We stayed because those were our orders. And then the bomb fell. Now there are five of these kids left. I don’t know who ordered us north, or why, but it’s almost as if they wanted to destroy any chance we had of stopping this.”